Recently, various environmental regulations have been strengthened due to climate changes, depletion of petroleum resources, and increase of greenhouse gases. Accordingly, countries including advanced countries have been making efforts to prevent environment pollution and vehicle industries have been made extensive researches to improve fuel efficiency and high powering of an engine.
In this respect, the present invention relates to an aluminum alloy that may be light-weighted and have improved-high heat resistance, thereby providing the aluminum alloy which may be applicable to a high power engine of a vehicle. In general, aluminum (Al) has been widely used in various industries since aluminum may be casted easily, alloyed well with other metals, and processed at room temperature and high temperature, and may have strong corrosion resistance to atmosphere and improved electrical and heat conductivity.
Particularly, since aluminum may have significantly low specific gravity among other metals, it has been used increasingly. But, since aluminum itself may have lower strength than other metals, aluminum alloys have been made progressively in order to compensate fragility of aluminum.
In current vehicle industry, a piston applied to an engine of a vehicle has been made of aluminum alloys; generally aluminum-silicon-copper-nickel (Al—Si—Cu—Ni) series alloys, or particularly Al-12Si-4Cu-3Ni series alloys has been used. However, the limit of material heat resistance of such aluminum alloys may be of about 110 bar level, which does not meet the material heat resistance limit to be applied to high powering engine in the future, for instance, up to about 130 bar.
Additionally, as the demands of reducing weight of various parts of vehicles has continuously increased, researches in novel alloys such as magnesium (Mg) alloys as an alternative material of aluminum alloys have been conducted. However, the application of magnesium has been reported to have limitations due to its high cost and low corrosion resistance.
The description provided above as a related art of the present invention is just for helping understanding the background of the present invention and should not be construed as being included in the related art known by those skilled in the art.